Enjoying the implosion of the Tories? That’s understandable ...

There have been times in living memory that Conservative leaders have sounded almost sensible on the surface – and times where they have sounded animal crackers, yet were still adored by their party. This is not either of those times. Kemi Badenoch left the crowd unmoved when she addressed her conference, even as she threw out the red meat of migrant-baiting she thought they wanted. It’s not so much that they’d all woken up with a renewed sense of humanity; more that they didn’t believe she’d ever be in a position to deliver it. It was, in effect, fake vegan meat. Tories hate that. One senior Conservative apparently called it a “New Orleans funeral”: noisy, energetic, but still a goodbye.

What next for the group with a decent case to make for itself as the most historically successful democratic party in the world? Some are having another squiz at Robert Jenrick, who was a hard “no” at the start of the night – but now it’s the end, and everyone else has left. Others are creating a buzz around Katie Lam, a 34-year-old MP of the 2024 intake, who looks like a Shires Tory while wallpapering her socials with anti-migrant content. Could she be the figurehead to beat back Reform, now outpolling the Conservatives by 20 points? Is there a word for beating your rivals by becoming exactly like them? And, if there isn’t, surely we could borrow one from martial arts?

If you’re enjoying any of this, in a how-the-mighty-are-fallen way, in a serves-them-right-for-austerity way, that is understandable – but absolutely bananas. You don’t even have to look at the US to know this, nor read Daniel Ziblatt’s seminal 2017 book, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy: every one of your synapses is screaming it. The mainstream right is the essential firewall against the far right.

Ziblatt’s thesis is that democracies survive by keeping the “propertied and powerful” happy. I’m not wild about it as an organising principle. It feels as though we’ve been keeping the propertied and powerful happy for ages, at the expense of everyone else, and they never seem quite happy enough to stop wanting to take a bite out of disability benefits. But his analysis isn’t a hunch, it’s an archival deep dive into the pre-Nazi German National People’s Party during the Weimar Republic (along with the British Conservatives circa 1906). When the mainstream right loses its confidence, when it starts to chase the buzzwords and symbolic politics of the far right, it hands them the steering wheel.

We saw some of this during the Brexit years – Boris Johnson cosying up to Steve Bannon was one particularly egregious examples – but far-right flirtation has become so pronounced now as to obliterate any other Tory talking points. What happened to the old-school Conservatives, who treasure stability, conservation, the constitution, the pride of Britain on the world stage? What happened to the modernisers, who described the nation in terms of powerhouses, not powder kegs? Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t wild about any of them either, but it’s absolutely striking how those worldviews – the one nation Tory, the Cameroonian Conservative – have been erased, in favour of relentless demonisation: of migrants, Muslims, benefit claimants and protesters.

They walk on stage to music that sounds like the theme tune to Game of Thrones, and talk about what they cannot stand for any more. They describe demonstrations by 75-year-old pacifists as “carnivals of hatred” and use flags – union flags, Saint George’s flags, anything with a splash of matadorial colour – as an open challenge to anyone who doesn’t think being British through and through is the best thing a person could possibly be. There doesn’t seem to be any natural braking system, where they check back in with their own values, their own hinterland, their own plan. Any stick Nigel Farage throws for them, they’ll chase. So, no, it’s not fun to watch them implode. They’re taking civil society down with them.

• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist